Non-intrusive water monitoring?

[Pcthompson]

I was at a trade show yesterday and saw an intriguing device called the Streamlabs Smart Home Water Monitor demonstrated. It is WiFi connected, uses ultrasonic sensors to determine water flow and reports to IOS and Android devices. Has anyone here given this product a try?

I currently have GEM with Dashbox monitoring my electrical consumption and solar generation with many years of great success. I am also monitoring my natural gas usage through a pulse input from a meter option offered by our utility (PSEG NJ).

So far I have not wanted to spend the money to have a plumber install a pulse meter on the water line, and have explored various passive monitoring methods using HALL effect and optical sensors.

In talking to the folks at the demo booth their product "currently" has no recurring costs. They also offer an API through AWS- that may have an additional cost; was not clear to me.

If it works reliably it would be pretty cool to have support for it on the Dashbox rather than be tied to AWS. A product that has an option for continuing to function WITHOUT cloud support would be much more valuable than a potential 'brick'.

Somehow I doubt it can be highly accurate when using ultrasonic flow detection at this price point, but I am willing to give it a try if it is even +/- 10% or so.

https://streamlabswater.com
https://www.amazon.com/Streamlabs-Smart ... B078SDZ3QG

[mattm55]

Thanks for the link and pointing this out.

I agree that installing an inline detector is the best case for accuracy BUT you also introduce another fail point. I found this out during a whole house humidifier. I wanted to monitor that water usage but the meter failed within a week.

So, with the API available, it might be worth a second look. I'm not one for relying on a cloud service as if the company tanks or gets sold, you got a brick. I guess for $199, its not a huge investment either. I'll grab one from AMZ and maybe do a quick install tutorial. Then my goal would be to integrate with HS3?

Ordered 12/18.

Not sponsoring but it's $40 off list price on their site.

Matt

[mattm55]

OK. Got my water meter the other day and installed. I was going to do an install tutorial but the thing takes about 2 minutes to install with 2 ty-wraps. It takes more time to load the app on the phone. Now to integrate with Homeseer3.

So far so good on wifi connections and monitoring.

Thanks for the info.
Merry Christmas all.

[strangely]

I recently bought a flume water meter which is also non intrusive.

https://flumetech.com

They are supposed to be working on an API, so it has some promise.

Pretty happy with it so far.

Richard

[j0dan]

Just thought I'd chime in here. The Flume is impressive and spot on accurate. For many areas there aren't any other ways to measure right where the water enters your house capturing both in-house and irrigation water usage.

[bgrubb1]

Ben. Their api looks a lot like the weather flow. I have no way to get a pulse counter / wire. Any chance of integrating to the DB ?

[ben]

Ben. Their api looks a lot like the weather flow. I have no way to get a pulse counter / wire. Any chance of integrating to the DB ?

I can look into it. At first glance I don't see any way to get data off the local network. WeatherFlow has a nice UDP packet you can pick up without having to reach out to the cloud.

[bgrubb1]

Thank you sir

[bgrubb1]

Ben, did you ever have a chance to look at the Flume water monitor ??
I am installing this weekend
looks like the API has a rest capability
...Barry

The Flume Personal API is a way for customers to consume their water usage data and integrate it with other SmartHome Hubs and/or Services.

You will have access to your:

Water Usage Data with flexible querying
Water Budgets
Notifications
API Type: REST, Cloud to Cloud
API Authentication: OAuth2 Password Grant

For more information check out our API Guides and interactive API Route Documentation

[ben]

Ben, did you ever have a chance to look at the Flume water monitor ??
I am installing this weekend
looks like the API has a rest capability
...Barry

The Flume Personal API is a way for customers to consume their water usage data and integrate it with other SmartHome Hubs and/or Services.

You will have access to your:

Water Usage Data with flexible querying
Water Budgets
Notifications
API Type: REST, Cloud to Cloud
API Authentication: OAuth2 Password Grant

For more information check out our API Guides and interactive API Route Documentation

Really wish they had a way to listen in over your local network. I'll take a look at the cloud service.